With the presidents of the United States accustomed to bowing to them (the most famous being the three consecutive ones from Josep Piqué to George Bush), seeing Barack Obama reclining in front of the abbot of Montserrat and kissing La Moreneta is shocking. Perhaps it is now that the world finds out about the existence of a joyous Catalonia thanks to Obama’s agenda, nothing improvised but successful. (Who organized the route these days?)
Obama’s Montserrat bow was the morning after Bruce Springsteen’s first concert in Europe. The Boss greeted Barcelona, ​​Catalonia and, in a time of depressive destruction of the language, he subtitled Letter to you in Catalan. The singer with the “voice of an undone bedâ€, according to the brilliant definition of Maruja Torres, not only made the usual cliché winks of any singer in any country, but also used only Catalan at various times during the concert. Michelle Obama, Kate Capshaw and Patti Scialfa acted as a tambourine choir singing Glory days from the stage and Steven Spielberg took out his cell phone to film the audience. The director who tries to save with each film the threatened and beautiful adventure of going to the movies and who filmed Liam Neeson as Schindler, Whoopi Goldberg as Celie, Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln, Meryl Streep, editor of The Washington Post, has now shot exteriors on the mountain of Montjuïc and Montserrat.
The impact of Barcelona and Catalonia in the world with this concert is priceless. The world did not look when it was time to play, this weekend it did. From the gastronomic route through a Barcelona that does not need to be cool by taking two saltwater lobsters from any restaurant, or sucking on shrimp heads, to a walk through the Gòtic infested with tourists like them. (This article about the Boss, Obama and Spielberg is not a provincial look, it is from a small country – which we are – and with low self-esteem, but these facts confirm its historical modernity and its evident differences). (While, in another part of the world, a candidate for the presidency of Spain moved away from the expressed modernity, trying to win votes by citing Bruce Esprinter (sic).)
In just three days we may have learned to love each other a little more.
